“Rise up on the breath of God,
Close to Heaven’s door.
Teach me how to harness the power,
So I can stop all war.”
– On The Wings Of Eagles, John Hansen
The Eagle Nebula region is a very interesting region for Astrophotography. This area has no shortage of signals; with a high-density star field as well. It’s definitely the “feature-rich” target region I like, and the area is made up of mainly H-II emission clouds. So the presentation of the cloud structure and the colors is a really challenging goal.
The project started back in March 2021. The idea is to utilize LRGB broadband filters to capture the natural luminosity colors; HSO narrowband filters for deep structures and color enhancement.
To my eyes, the S-II channel gives the best “structural” view. I really love it. The O-III channel helps to color the brightest core area. I didn’t really try to HDR the core region – I like the bright core to glow, and most importantly, to show how different layers of bright clouds extend out from the nebula core. DeNoise AI’s “Severe Noise Mode” was tested in the post-processing after reading Kevin’s report. Even if the sharpening is turned off to 0, I still see unnecessary sharpening happen. I settled with “Recovering Original Details” to 36%.
The choice of colors is based on an enhanced natural LRGB palette. It’s more like HOO style.
For the main structure of the presentation, I wanted to have a “3D-structure” feeling. And I am quite happy with what I saw. The emission cloud structure under the wing does show some depth, and the dark clouds in the center section give a little “floating” look & feel. Well, it could be my illusion. I’ve stared at this for too long (3 nights), and literally, I am colorblind already. ?
A center crop version is uploaded to Version B to show the detailed structures and colors of the nebula core. I will take a break for some time and make a narrowband-only version with RGB stars. It should be fun.